Let’s separate the content that I’ve prepared into 3 stations. These sections are intended to give an overview of the learning tools that are available to students so that you can get the most out of Netmath. Without further ado, let’s go explore these three stations!

Station 1: Personalize your students’ accounts

Station 2: Find your way in the Netmath architecture

Station 3: Explore the toolbox

A Netmath account can look very different from one user to the next. Although teachers generally aren’t too concerned about this feature, students LOVE personalizing their accounts! Here are three features that can have a major impact on your students’ level of engagement.

First, at the start of the year, there are 2 interesting options that can be found in the “My Account” section of Netmath’s home page. You can access it by simply clicking on the avatar at the bottom of the sidebar.

From there, students and teachers can modify their accounts.

1. Change the theme by clicking on the button at the top right side of the screen. You’ll see that there is a huge range of options available to you!
2. You can change your avatar by selecting the pencil that appears beside the inset image.
3. You can even change the timezone!

Please note that we made sure to offer more variety for students than for teachers! Here are some examples taken from a teacher account and a student account:

You may not need to give your students the grand tour, but once they know about this option, they never go without it!

Award a badge

During the year, you can also add your two cents to your students’ learning experience!

At any time, you can send a personalized badge to any of your students. To do this, go to the “Individual Report,” select the student you have in mind, and then find the “Award a badge” button.

We have created a system of badges where the names correspond to each of the interdisciplinary skills in the curriculum. Please note that it is not mandatory to use this structure for the formal evaluation of student competence. Here is what the badge award page looks like when you select the “Award a badge” tab.

When selecting a badge, you can personalize the message that will accompany the badge or opt for the message proposed by our team.

By using this option, you can highlight your students’ good efforts by documenting their personal portfolio.

In this station, the goal is to go over the different types of books that you can find on your home page. That way, you’ll be better able to find content that meets your needs during the year.

There are 5 different types of books on the platform:

• Activities;
• Explorations;
• Demonstrations;
• Puzzles;
• Missions.

Not surprisingly, you can find these books in the Books section on the sidebar.

Activity Books

First, all of the blue books are filled with math activities that are aligned with your curriculum. These books cover all grades from the 3rd year of primary school to the three sections of the 4th year of secondary school. This is where you’ll find activities that will help your students develop their math skills. We’ll come back to this, but I’ll let you take a look at what an activity looks like.

Explorations

The compass represents the book that contains all of the explorations on Netmath. These particular activities are designed allow students to manipulate numerical objects to enhance their understanding of certain mathematical concepts. For example, there is an exploration in which students can manipulate money and observe the total value that is updated in real time!

Demonstrations

This play icon represents the demonstrations. To give an example, a teacher can use demonstrations to facilitate teaching how to use a protractor. In this particular case, the teacher is spared using the protractor on his or her interactive whiteboard (an adventure that can prove to be full of obstacles).

Here, simply click on the play button to move on to the next step or click on the stop button to return to the start of the animation.

Puzzles and Riddles

The puzzle piece represents the book that contains the riddles and puzzles. This book is particularly popular with students, who are always asking for more! First, riddles are activities that do not have a detailed solution. To successfully complete them, the only issue is perseverance! As an example, here is the very first page of this section:

The puzzles are logical-mathematical activities that make it possible to practice certain problem-solving skills while having fun. For example, here, the game begins when you remove any token from the initial triangle. One token gobbles up another one by jumping on it. The goal is to make all but one of the tokens disappear! It’s not as easy as it looks.

Missions

Accessible from the book menu, the missions are part of a scripted story dreamed up by the Netmath team. On the one hand, this section of the platform is designed to offer a fun setting that makes students want to continue the adventure and do math when it’s not compulsory. On the other hand, the missions are a window into the world of famous mathematicians from different eras. The missions also make it easy to integrate the history of mathematics into the math content covered during the year.

Unfortunately, the minimum grade suggested to tackle the missions is around the 6th year of primary school. However, they are still accessible to all and can be used to pique the curiosity of students in the lower grades.

Now that we’ve toured all of the options hiding in the existing book menu together, I invite you to go and really explore them to see exactly what they’re all about.

In the first 2 stations, you learned how to personalize your account, whether it’s a teacher or student account. You also explored the variety of books found on the home page. In the third section, we’ll take a look at the tools available to students. Let’s go…

The tool bar

The top bar contains 3 intriguing symbols: the pencil, the calculator, the Pi symbol and a button to display an example!

The pencil

The Calculator

You may have recognized the calculator, which is sometimes useful to make simple calculations without needing to get everything out of your pencil cases. It is a basic calculator that can be used to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

The glossary

The Pi symbol leads directly to the visual glossary or to the reference glossary, depending on what grade you’re in when you consult it.

The visual glossary

Available for the primary activities, it provides descriptions of mathematical terms that include images. It also allows students to manipulate some objects in order to improve their understanding of the term.

The reference glossary

It is glossary of mathematical formulas, available in secondary activities. It’s an essential tool for students to solve problems in Netmath. Here is an example of a section of the reference glossary.

Display an example

Just below the arrows used to move from one page to the next, there is a button labelled “Display an example.” This feature reveals an example that is comparable to the math question in progress. The goal is simply to provide an additional tool that students who are having difficulties can count on. Among other things, displaying an example allows them to understand precisely what is expected from them for that question.

Speech synthesis

A support measure has also been integrated in Netmath. It’s the speech synthesis that you can find close to each paragraph on the platform. This tool is represented by the blue speaker in the margins of the activity. By clicking on this button, the text is highlighted and the word being read is displayed in a different colour. This is called word tracking.

Solutions

Another very useful tool to assist student learning is the solution that is displayed each time a student answers a question. That way, whether students find the right answer or not, they can consult the solution to see another way of arriving at the same result, or to benefit from a line of reflection that will help them succeed on their next attempt.

This is Netmath’s greatest strength! An incorrect answer simply means that a notice is displayed to draw the student’s attention to what’s wrong. Sometimes, it’s just a careless mistake, but it can also be a symptom of a mistaken approach and then it’s possible to intervene on this emerging difficulty as soon as it appears.

Dynamic data

You’re probably thinking that it’s ridiculous to give the solution to the students before they have succeeded at the page by themselves! Well, it would be, if the information in the problem statement remained the same from one attempt to the next. However, in Netmath, that’s not the case: the data are dynamic. They change each time the page is refreshed.

I encourage you to go test each of these tools to more easily assist your students (or your teachers) as they explore the platform. That way, before intervening, you can ask them:

• Did you highlight the important words?

• Did you use the calculator to check your calculations?

• Is this concept in the glossary?

• Did you go see the example?

• Are there any words you don’t understand? Are they in the glossary?

• Did you make an attempt? The detailed solution could help you!

By drawing on these questions, you’ll increase the amount of time you can spend really helping your students to develop their math skills!

…receive a badge that you did not send them!

In fact, in addition to the general skills badges that you learned about earlier in this training, your students will probably be awarded knowledge badges without you doing anything.

Don’t worry!

It’s a system that the Netmath team set up to encourage students to continue their adventures on the platform.

From certain sections of the activities menu, you can find a progress bar with locks. After completing an activity, the student will see the bar being coloured in until it passes the limit set by the first lock (here, the limit is 10 activities).  

When the limit is passed, a secret activity will be offered to the student and if they manage to complete it in less than three attempts, they will earn a badge, such as the bronze Arithmetic – Number Sense badge.

Be warned, it will be just the beginning for this student!

…try missions before you even talk to them about it!

Just like in a teacher account, the students have access to ALL THE CONTENT on Netmath. This includes the missions! At the start of the year, some students may be curious to find out what’s in the Laboratory section and end up visiting the first mission, “Introduction to Netmath.” Once again, although this introduction is more accessible, it’s important to note that the target math level for the first mission corresponds to about the 6th grade (end of the school year). A little bit of context can change discouragement into perseverance!

What?!?!

We’re already finished going over the content from level 2 of this training?

Still, I can’t tell if you were really listening to my explanations, so I have an idea of how to keep tabs on what you’ve learned during our discussions.

It’s a simple question that goes like this: